Before Sunset

A great review by Wintervalley at here:
and here.




I really enjoyed this movie with mostly conversation between two actors. Kind of flat at first sight, but eventually you will follow how they felt deep inside.

The links to the scripts for both movies can also be found on the web at their yahoo groups.

AMA said to the "saint" pharmacists: if you don't, we will

See linked report on Baltimore Sun.

Technically, if a physician can prescribe medicine, they should be able to give their patients the correct drug in correct amounts. Why wouldn't allow them to do this? Guess the pharmacists are afraid of this is the start for the public to know it's ridiculus to pay someone $80K plus counting pills? Of course, they sometimes also give out free comments on your lifestyle especially when you didn't ask for them.

Pharmacists should have their own religious belief and they can choose to do whatever they can as long as it's legal. However, the pressure should be on their employers, the chain drug stores and pharmacies. We need to make them liable for not be able to sell drugs with a valid prescription, unless they put a big sign in the storefront saying "We don't sell contraceptives." Then those "Saint" pharmacists will only be able to either work for the few pharmacies who would do that or open their own pharmacies. They may get less paid, hey, you pay a price for your own belief, right?

How do we approach illegal immigration?

According to the LA Times article, citing a recent study from the Pew Hispanic Forum, "...for the last 10 years, arrival of illegal migrants has far outstripped legal immigration."

Although the United States is a country built by immigrants over the past 200+ years, it is unrealistic to continuing unrestricted immigration. As also acknowledged in the article and by other interested parties, the existing "undocumented migrants" are already integrate part of the our community. It is a dedicated situation that needs attention as well as courage to deal with, which is currently lacking from neither political parties.

There are major negative repercussions of this issue were not properly handled. One of them would be the break down of the welfare and health care system currently already in turmoil. Ignoring the illegal immigrant as long as they have work will encourage more illegal boarder crossings from the south, which is very difficult to stop. As found in the Pew Hispanic study, the "mixed families" will also destroy the applicability of the "guest worker" program that will ultimately send them back.

The root of this problem is the imbalance between the US and our southern neighbor. The ultimate solution would be increase financial aid and trade with Mexico and gradually minimize the economic differences. This is easier said than done, yes, but may be the only solution.

Another more "practical" but not so "humane" solution would be to make illegal immigrant finding jobs in the US more difficult. One step would be more Strictly enforced employment laws that punish the EMPLOYERS who hire workers without a valid social security card or work permit. This has been successfully done in large businesses but now we need to push it to small businesses. For those who uses a fake social security card, the communications between servers in the IRS and the social security administration need to be enhanced for enforcement.

An extreme step would be stop automatically recognizing new born with US citizenship when both parents are in the US illegally. We should note that this could be difficult and costly to implement.

At the same time, make legal immigration faster and easy. Rewards those who follows the law and make employers hiring low paid jobs from outside the country more easily. A good example would be the guest workers program in the middle east.

To implement these steps we need to facing the illegal immigrants already in the US. One way to address these is to set up a deadline to register all currently undocumented works and give them priority in the legal guest workers program and later permanent residency.

Congress, federal and local government need to work together on this issue. The local government mush facing the facts that illegal immigration is not only a federal problem.

Additional reading:

ECU alumni party with Chancellor Steve Ballard in Velton (Ray) Bunch's Beverly Hills Home

The new Chancellor Steve Ballard will host an alumni party in Beverly Hills at Velton (Ray) Bunch (71)'s home.

Dr. Ballard has discussed a few current progresses in enrollment, medical research, and sport teams.

Will post pictures later when they are available at ECU's alumni page.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: nice sexy couple without a story

I don't want this blog to be a movie review site. But let's get on it. I'll get back to my Star Wars III comment in a little bit.

First, I had to admit that Angelina Julie is a much better match (visually at least) to Brad Pitt than Jennifer Aniston. They are both very sexy, strong, and Naturally seductive. Seeing is believing. In real life, this may not work, but they do on movies.



Secondly, the plot sucks. There's no really story and twist. The ending is given to you right from the beginning.

Third, it's actually very funny. I do enjoy a lot of its joke. Just because of this, I may recommend it to my friends.

A Mac with an Intel core?

According to David Kirkpatrick's column at Fortune, Jobs sees the strength of Apple lies on Software. Is that true? I'm not so sure about. It's the slick design that is attractive to me. Software wise, didn't see it having too much advantage over Microsoft or other developers.